The great name “Operation Brainstorm” refers to a program from the National Headache Foundation in the USA. If you’re a veteran or on active duty, you may want to check it out.
The goal of Operation Brainstorm is to actually visit various locations throughout the country to host forums, provide education, and even provide “migraine survival toolkits”. For example, the program will make a visit to the American Legion Post 0346 in Farmington on the 11th of October 2023.
There has been a growing understanding of traumatic brain injury and of course post-traumatic stress disorder, which are often associated with headache and migraine symptoms. The National Headache Foundation is able to bring its expertise to good use in these areas.
For more information, check out the poster (click the poster to go the the official site) and the video below.
Clinical trials and professional surveys for cluster headache patients are not very common, so when I was contacted about these two trials I wanted to make sure I shared them with you. Both trials are in for cluster patients in the USA. Both are being led by Dr. Mark Burish through the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
We all know that cluster headache results in serious disability, but measuring that disability is a challenge. This study will evaluate a tool that could help researchers and doctors better understand and to some extent measure cluster disability. It also helps when it comes to getting insurance and funding for cluster headache treatment and research.
Patients can be anywhere in the USA because they complete the survey (actually, three surveys over a period of three months) online. It’s open to “people with cluster headache (either now or in the past)”. You can go directly to the consent form here:
I’m told that this is currently the only non-pharmaceutical clinical trial for cluster in the USA. It’s a six-week study of high-dose vitamin D3 for the prevention of cluster attacks. The trial is for patients currently in their cluster cycle, however they may sign up at any time and begin when their cycle begins. It’s important to know that you should be able to continue with your current treatments during this trial.
You do need to call or email to enroll. Further details of who can enroll, as well as all contact information, can be found here:
I don’t know about you, but to me it feels like the last few years migraine has been ignored. Don’t get me wrong, I know there are a lot of other things to be concerned about. But once again I’m hoping that we can encourage and promote the Migraine World Summit, and get people’s heads back into finding better treatments for migraine!
And yes – the dates have been announced – 8-16 March! Not only that, the full schedule is out. Check it out here:
As past participants know, the schedule is important because you probably won’t want to attend every single session. So you need to find your top few, the ones that will best fit your situation, and be most helpful for you.
There is an incredible line up this year, with some very 2023 topics, and topics that many of you have been requesting! If you have never attended before, you’ll be amazed at the amount of expert, practical information.
Last month a meta-study was published in the Journal of Oral & Facial Pain and Headache, focusing on the use of melatonin supplements for migraine. The results are pretty encouraging for a supplement that is generally considered safe in small doses.
The helpful thing about this new study is that it didn’t just evaluate if melatonin “helped”, but it got specific into the “how”. Researchers found the following benefits:
Less frequent migraine attacks
Shorter migraine attacks
Less severe migraine attacks
Less use of “painkillers”
Why exactly melatonin works so well is not entirely understood. Obviously, if melatonin helps you sleep, improved sleep will certainly help fight migraine. But there may be more to it than that.
Melatonin is also an antioxidant, which may provide a number of benefits. Headache researchers have especially honed in on the anti-inflammatory powers of melatonin. More recently, melatonin gained traction as part of the COVID-19 fighting toolbox (see for example this study).
Melatonin is, of course, produced naturally in your body. At a 2019 Migraine World Summit event, migraine expert Dr. Christine Lay provided some very helpful advice for migraine patients:
I think there are ways to promote your own melatonin. When we come home after a busy day, I encourage patients to keep their room dim. And so not to have every single light on in the house, every, you know, television going, but rather to keep the room fairly dim and to use lamp lighting, perhaps, rather than overhead lighting so our own natural melatonin will kick in. But for some patients supplements can be very effective. I think we have to be mindful as migraine patients that you’re not spending all of your money on the most expensive one but you’re not buying the cheapest one because we know these things are not really mandated. We don’t know about quality control, necessarily. So you want to make sure you’re buying a good product.
The other thing I think is important: there are sometimes what we call sublingual, or melt-in-your-mouth, melatonin. I tend to tell patients to avoid those because they usually have additives in them or they may have an artificial sweetener which could then provoke a migraine attack. So they need to stick, primarily, with tablets or pills. In terms of amounts, it’s quite variable. There’s a lot of research showing that melatonin can help patients with chronic migraine, even chronic migraine people who feel like they don’t have a sleep problem. There’s something positive about melatonin. It may actually have even an antiinflammatory benefit to some degree. So melatonin can be very effective. I usually have patients start at a lower dose, perhaps three milligrams, and then work slowly to build up depending on how they tolerate it. I don’t think patients, without discussing with their doctor, should go beyond 10 milligrams because you have to be mindful of how much you’re taking. And most experts will say you need a melatonin break. It’s something that’s naturally produced in our brains by the pineal gland, and so, if you’re continually supplementing the melatonin, your brain might get used to not making its own. So you do need to take periodic breaks every few weeks or couple of months.
Dr. Christine Lay
Dr. Lay also recommends foods with melatonin, such as walnuts. (Make yourself some Morning Glory Muffins. Seriously.)
For a highly-rated melatonin without a lot of the additives that Dr. Lay talks about, try Natrol Melatonin. It’s very inexpensive right now, and has even bigger savings with Subscribe & Save. Be sure to get this particular version – Natrol has various others, such as the fast dissolve version that has additives that you’ll want to avoid.
A new study is once again linking migraine and sugar – and yes, there’s something you can do about it.
We’ve talked a lot about the link between migraine and eating, in particular, sugar and refined grains. But how your body responds to foods is actually very complex, so there’s a lot more to say.
A diet that gives you a lot of spikes in sugar certainly seems to trigger more migraine attacks. For example, liquid sugar – drinking a lot of juice or carbonated sugary beverages, for example.
The study talked a lot about “insulin resistance”. Imagine it this way. There’s a lumber mill out in the forest, and trees are being cut down and made into planks for building houses, and so on. I might add that this is a very sustainable operation, and trees are being replanted and habitats protected. 🙂
The lumber mill salesman goes into the city with his planks and sells them to all the people, and the people go into action, building houses using wood for fuel and making little toys and whatever else they do with the wood. Wood is amazing.
But after a while, the lumberjack starts getting a little greedy and starts cutting down more and more trees. The lumber mill is having trouble keeping up, but it’s giving a lot of work to the salesman. The salesman, also getting greedy, is in the city constantly, shouting to all his clients about what they could do with more and more and more wood! More salesmen are trained for the “growing market”.
After buying the wood for a while, and storing the extra in the garage, the people in the city get fed up. They have too much wood, the salesman is simply annoying – they’re done. They get so fed up, they call the police on the salesman, put out a restraining order, and start putting up posters warning everyone to stop buying from this guy.
You can understand their concerns – but now a system that was working well is completely broken. A very useful system is ending up with unused wood gathering dust in the garage, and at the same time a supply-chain problem. But now the salesmen have too much wood – so the storehouses are getting full of wood, that’s simply not being used for anything.
Now, imagine that the wood is food you eat with sugar. It’s processed by the body, and a salesman – let’s call him Mr. Insulin – gets the sugar to the city (or perhaps stores some of the wood properly in the lumber storehouse – like the liver, for example). The city (cities) is like your cells.
Sometimes, for various reasons, the cells can become “resistant” to the salesman, Mr. Insulin. The salesman gets more aggressive – in fact, more salesmen are trained at the Pancreas School of Insulin, because obviously, something isn’t working. But more salesmen aren’t helping.
For a while, the sales trucks are full of wood, but eventually there’s too much wood (sugar) for the insulin. The body is simply getting overwhelmed.
The excess sugar is stored in the storehouses – we call it “fat”, and you might see this right around your waist.
Insulin Resistance and Migraine
With the system broken, you end up with all kinds of problems. Diabetes…. it may cause problems in the brain – dementia – and … migraine?
This particular study, as you may guess, did find a link between insulin resistance and migraine, as well as metabolic syndrome and migraine. Metabolic syndrome is defined by the Mayo Clinic as “a cluster of conditions that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. These conditions include increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels.”
Researchers looked at various indications of metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance. For example, fat around the waist. Yes, more likely in the migraine group. Insulin resistance? More likely in a migraine patient. Higher levels of insulin? Yes. Metabolic syndrome? Same thing.
And looking at the situation in reverse, migraine patients with insulin resistance were more likely to have worse migraine disease – more disability, worse attacks, and so on. Metabolic syndrome, in this case, was not as closely related to worse attacks.
Now we need to remember that there are a number of things that can cause “supply chain” issues in the body. Think of our lumber mill. Maybe one city just tends to build houses more slowly and carefully. Maybe the lumberjack gets a more efficient chainsaw. Maybe the weather is bad for a season.
In the same way, problems people with certain genetics or medical histories – or family medical histories – may be more susceptible to “supply chain” problems.
This study doesn’t show that insulin resistance causes migraine, but it is another clue (along with many other studies) that general health should help fight against migraine.
If you’re tempted to go and spend a fortune on that new exercise equipment, or that pill promising to “melt” fat around your waistline, think twice. Before getting to “next level” options, you have the power to make a huge difference in your own health.
That’s right – we’re back to exercise and diet.
Consider “quitting sugar” (that is, drastically reducing the added sugars and refined grains in your diet). For tips, see How To Quit Sugar (1) and How To Quit Sugar (2). If you spend most of your time in a chair, start by adding some movement to your day. In other words, take small steps to get your body moving. This does not mean going from the armchair to 6 hours at the gym tomorrow. Small steps, but consistent, regular steps.
